In Soviet Russia, you find court guilty!

This article in yesterday's Anchorage Daily News caught my eye because of its local flavor, and because I wrote a big long paper about judicial reform in Russia last winter. A delegation of judges from Khabarovsk, Russian Far East, recently paid a visit to Anchorage as part of an ongoing exchange. Apparently 90% of criminal cases go to trial in Russia, as opposed to 5-10% in the states. There are problems with access to records, along with problems getting public files online. And judicial discretion is much narrower.

Vladimir Putin made a big show of judicial reform a few years back, then got to work quietly undermining it, most visibly by trying to move some of the high courts from Moscow to St. Petersburg. He's had a few other moves behind the scenes to undermine judicial independence and due process of law. Change doesn't come overnight, but hopefully Russian courts won't be mere conviction factories forever.